EngLit 1

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burden of the curse of Babel."

A Defence of Poetry - Percy Bysshe Shelley

If I were one whom the loud world held wise, I should disdain to quote authorities In commendation of this kind of love :— Why there is first the God in heaven above. Who wrote a book called Nature, 'tis to be Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly; And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece, And Jesus Christ himself did never cease To urge all living things to love each other. And to forgive their mutual faults, and smother The Devil of disunion in their souls.

Epipsychiodon, Verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate lady Emilia V, A Cancelled Passage - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"The evil is great, but it may be averted - it has been a general, but it is not therefore a necessary consequence. In order to avert it, we should teach ourselves and others habitually to consider, that truth wields no weapon, but that of investigation, we should be cautious how we indulge even the feelings of virtuous indignation. Indignation is the handsome brother of Anger and Hatred. Benevolence alone beseems the Philosopher. [...] Philosophy imputes not the great evil to the corrupted, but to the system which presents the temptation to corruption. This evil must cease when the cause is removed, and the courtier who is enabled by State Machinations to embroil or enslave a nation when levelled to the standard of men will be impotent of evil, as he is now unconscious of good." (p. 18)

A Moral and Political Lecture - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"The example of France is indeed a 'Warning to Britain.' A nation wading to their Rights through Blood, and marking the track of Freedom by Devastation! Yet let us not embattle our Feelings against our Reason. Let us not indulge our malignant Passions under the mask of Humanity. Instead of railing with infuriate declamation against these excesses, we shall be more profitably employed in developing the sources of them. French Freedom is the Beacon, that while it guides us to Equality should shew us the Dangers, that throng the road." (p. 6) "The Patriots of France either hastened into the dangerous and gigantic Error of making certain Evil the means of contingent Good, or were sacrificed by the Mob, with whose prejudices and ferocity their unbending Virtue forbade them to assimilate." (p. 7)

A Moral and Political Lecture - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Convinced of the justice of our principles, let neither scorn nor oppression prevent us from disseminating them. By the gradual deposition of time, error has been piled upon error and prejudice upon prejudice, till few men are tall enough to look over them, and they whose intellects surpass the common stature, and who describe the green vales and pleasant prospects beyond them, will be thought to have created images in vacancy and be honoured with the name of madman; [...]" (p. 19)

A Moral and Political Lecture - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown, For whom should she have wak'd the sullen year? To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere Amid the faint companions of their youth, With dew all turn'd to tears; odour, to sighing truth.

Adonias: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats - Percy Bysshe Shelley

He has outsoar'd the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceas'd to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

Adonias: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? The nameless worm would now itself disown: It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong, But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song, Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

Adonias: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep, He hath awaken'd from the dream of life; 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings. We decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

Adonias: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats - Percy Bysshe Shelley

The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead; The vultures to the conqueror's banner true Who feed where Desolation first has fed, And whose wings rain contagion; how they fled, When, like Apollo, from his golden bow The Pythian of the age one arrow sped And smil'd! The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

Adonias: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats - Percy Bysshe Shelley

The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclips'd, but are extinguish'd not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

Adonias: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ah! he is gone — and I alone; How dark and dreary seems the time! 'Tis Thus, when the glad sun is flown, Night rushes o'er the Indian clime. Is there no star to cheer this night No soothing twilight for the breast? Yes, Memory sheds her fairy light, Pleasing as sunset's golden west. And hope of dawn — Oh! brighter far Than clouds that in the orient burn; More welcome than the morning star Is the dear thought — he will return!

Ah! He is Gone - and I Alone! - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

- Learn, then, what morals critics ought to show,For 'tis but half a judge's task to know.'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;In all you speak, let truth and candor shine:That not alone what to your sense is dueAll may allow, but seek your friendship too. - Be silent always, when you doubt your sense;And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:Some positive persisting fops we know,Who, if once wrong will needs be always so;But you, with pleasure, own your errors past,And make each day a critique on the last. - 'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;Men must be taught as if you taught them not,And things unknown proposed as things forgot.Without good breeding truth is disapproved;That only makes superior sense beloved.

Alexander Pope - An Essay on Criticism

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne - Sonnet 14, from Holy Sonnets

- Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense,Weigh thy opinion against providence;Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,Say, here He gives too little, there too much;Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust;If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,Alone made perfect here, immortal there:Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,Re-judge His justice, be the God of God.In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,Men would be angels, angels would be gods.Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:And who but wishes to invert the lawsOf order, sins against the Eternal Cause. - From Epistle II, on passion: - - Alas, what wonder! man's superior partUnchecked may rise, and climb from art to art;But when his own great work is but begun,What reason weaves, by passion is undone.

Alexander Pope - Essay on Man

"The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the sublime of the Bible [...] Shakespeare and Milton were both curb'd by the general malady and infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword. [...]

And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time / Jerusalem - A poetic preface to Milton - William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold, Bring me my Arrows of desire, Bring me my Spear; O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire! I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green & pleasant Land.

And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time / Jerusalem - A poetic preface to Milton - William Blake

'Tis time to leave the books in dust And oil th'unusèd armor's rust, Removing from the wall The corselet of the hall. So restless Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious arts of peace, But through adventurous war Urgèd his active star; And, like the three-forked lighting, first Breaking the clouds where it was nursed, Did through his own side His fiery way divide:

Andrew Marvell - An Horatian Ode

Now we must praise heaven-kingdom's Guardian, the Measurer's might and his mind-plans, the work of the Glory Father, when he of wonders of every one, eternal Lord, the beginning established. He first created for men's sons heaven as a roof, holy Creator; then middle-earth mankind's Guardian, eternal Lord, afterwards made - for men earth, Master almighty.

Caedmon's Hymn 657-680

I could tell ye How smooth his breast was and how white his belly; And whose immortal fingers did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint That runs along his back, but my rude pen Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men, Much less of powerful gods. Let it suffice [...] Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen Enamoured of his beauty had he been. His presence made the rudest peasant melt That in the vast uplandish country dwelt. The barbarous Thracian soldier, moved with nought, Was moved with him and for his favour sought. Some swore he was a maid in man's attire, For in his looks were all that men desire, A pleasant smiling cheek, a speaking eye, A brow for love to banquet royally; And such as knew he was a man, would say, "Leander, thou art made for amorous play [...]" The mightiest kings have had their minions;Great Alexander loved Hephaestion,The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept;And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped.And not kings only, but the wisest men:The Roman Tully loved Octavius,Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.

Christopher Marlowe - Hero And Leander

"SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE tells us a story in his collection of Fables, of the Cock and the Horses. The Cock was gotten to roost in the stable among the horses; and there being no racks or other conveniences for him, it seems, he was forced to roost upon the ground. The horses jostling about for room, and putting the Cock in danger of his life, he gives them this grave advice: 'Pray, Gentlefolks! let us stand still! for fear we should tread upon one another!' There are some people in the World, who, now they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and under strong and very just apprehensions of being further treated as they deserve, begin, with ESOP'S Cock, to preach up Peace and Union and the Christian duty of Moderation; forgetting that, when they had the Power in their hands, those Graces were strangers in their gates!"

Daniel Defoe - The Shortest Way with the Dissenters

- "You have butchered one King! deposed another King! and made a Mock King of a third! and yet, you could have the face to expect to be employed and trusted by the fourth! Anybody that did not know the temper of your Party, would stand amazed at the impudence as well as the folly to think of it!" - "This was the cruelty of the Church of England! Fatal lenity! It was the ruin of that excellent Prince, King CHARLES I. Had King JAMES sent all the Puritans in England away to the West Indies; we had been a national unmixed Church! the Church of England had been kept undivided and entire!" - "Alas, the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and Schismatics on the other, how has She been crucified between two thieves. NOW, LET US CRUCIFY THE THIEVES!"

Daniel Defoe - The Shortest Way with the Dissenters

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring; Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, But leechlike to their fainting country cling Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow. A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field; An army, whom liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield; Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed; A senate, Time's worst statute, unrepealed— Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

England in 1819 - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage, Pourest such music, that it might assuage The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody; This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale! But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wreckt. I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go

Epipsychiodon, Verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate lady Emilia V - Percy Bysshe Shelley

(1) Government has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being. (4) As the benefit of the governed, is, or ought to be the origin of government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly emanate from their will. (12) A man has a right to unrestricted liberty of discussion, falsehood is a scorpion that will sting itself to death. (18) Expediency is inadmissible in morals. Politics are only sound when conducted on principles of morality. They are, in fact, the morals of nations. (24) A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren. (25) If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India! (31) The only use of government is to repress the vices of man. If man were to day sinless, to-morrow he would have a right to demand that government and all its evils should cease.

From Declaration of Rights - Percy Bysshe Shelley

- Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, - Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, - Fill up the intersperséd vacancies - And momentary pauses of the thought! - My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart - With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, - And think that thou shalt learn far other lore, - And in far other scenes! For I was reared - In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, - And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. - But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze - By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags - Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, - Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores - And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear - The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible - Of the eternal language, which thy God - Utters, who from eternity doth teach - Himself in all, and all things in himself. - Great universal Teacher! he shall mould - Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Frost at Midnight - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. - (death dying - paradox) From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne - Death be not proud

Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear, That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there. Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime Tells me from you that now it is bed time. ... License my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below. O my America! my new-found-land, - Conceit - exploring the body as new land My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned, My mine of precious stones, my empery, How blest am I in this discovering thee! To enter in these bonds is to be free; Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

John Donne - Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed (inspired by Ovid's Amores)

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thy self, nor me the weaker now; 'Tis true; then learn how false, fears be: Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

John Donne - Flea

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member...

John Donne - Meditation

"I never stoop'd so low, as they Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey, Seldom to them, which soar no higher Than virtue or the mind to admire, For sense, and understanding may Know, what gives fuel to their fire: My love, though silly, is more brave,For may I miss, when ere I crave, If I know yet, what I would have. If that be simply perfectest Which can by no way be exprest But Negatives, my love is so. To All, which all love, I say no. If any who deciphers best, What we know not, our selves, can know, Let him teach me that nothing; This As yet my ease, and comfort is, Though I speed not, I cannot miss."

John Donne - Negative Love

Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead, And her soul early into heaven ravished, Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set. Here the admiring her my mind did whet To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head; But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed, A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet. But why should I beg more love, when as thou Dost woo my soul, for hers off'ring all thine, And dost not only fear lest I allow My love to saints and angels, things divine, But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out.

John Donne - Sonnet 17, from Holy Sonnets

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honor, or his grace, Or the king's real, or his stampèd face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love. Alas, alas, who's injured by my love? What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love. Call us what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We're tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find the eagle and the dove. The phœnix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it. So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love. We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no piece of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, And by these hymns, all shall approve Us canonized for Love.

John Donne - The Canonization

Now thou has loved me one whole day, Tomorrow when you leav'st, what wilt thou say? Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow? Or say that now We are not just those persons which we were? Or, that oaths made in reverential fear Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear? Or, as true deaths true marriages untie, So lovers' contracts, images of those, Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose? Or, your own end to justify, For having purposed change and falsehood, you Can have no way but falsehood to be true? Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could Dispute and conquer, if I would, Which I abstain to do, For by tomorrow, I may think so too.

John Donne - Woman's Constancy

- "Yet London, empress of the northern clime, - By an high fate thou greatly didst expire; - Great as the world's, which at the death of time - Must fall, and rise a nobler frame by fire. - - As when some dire usurper Heaven provides, - To scourge his country with a lawless sway: - His birth, perhaps, some petty village hides, - And sets his cradle out of fortune's way: - - Such was the rise of this prodigious fire, - Which in mean buildings first obscurely bred, - From thence did soon to open streets aspire, - And straight to palaces and temples spread."

John Dryden - Annus Mirabilis/The Year of Wonders

"For when his early valour heaven had crossed, And all at Worcester but the honour lost, Forced into exile from his rightful throne, He made all countries where he came his own; [...] Thus banished David spent abroad his time, When to be God's anointed was his crime; [...] And welcome now, great monarch, to our own! Behold the approaching cliffs of Albion. It is no longer motion cheats your view; As you meet it, the land approacheth you. The land returns, and in the white it wears The marks of penitence and sorrow bears."

John Dryden - Astrea Redux/Justice Restored

- "No borrowed bays his temples did adorn - But to our crown he did fresh jewels bring; - Nor was his virtue poisoned, soon as born, - With the too early thoughts of being king."

John Dryden - Heroic Stanzas

-"Thirdly, Another abuse of language is an affected obscurity; by either applying old words to new and unusual significations; or introducing new and ambiguous terms, without defining either; or else putting them so together, as may confound their ordinary meaning."

John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Since a Definition is the only way, whereby the precise Meaning of moral Words can be known; and yet a way, whereby their Meaning may be known certainly, and without leaving any room for any contest about it."

John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

This is unavoidably to be so, where men's parts and learning are estimated by their skill in disputing. And if reputation and reward shall attend these conquests, which depend mostly on the fineness and niceties of words, it is no wonder if the wit of man so employed, should perplex, involve, and subtilize the signification of sounds, so as never to want something to say in opposing or defending any question; the victory being adjudged not to him who had truth on his side, but the last word in the dispute. (Ibid. p. 315)

John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

"For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licencings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power. [...] And were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferr'd before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evill-doing."

John Milton - Areopagitica

"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compar'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression, they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretick in the truth; and if he beleeve things only because his Pastor sayes so, or the Assembly so determins, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds, becomes his heresie."

John Milton - Areopagitica

-"And had it not bin the obstinat perversenes of our Prelats against the divine and admirable spirit of Wicklef, to suppresse him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Husse and Jerom, no nor the name of Luther, or of Calvin had bin ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had bin completely ours."

John Milton - Areopagitica

"Let these mental despots recollect, that education cannot unsex a woman; that tenderness of soul, and a love of social intercourse, will still be her's; even though she become a rational friend, and an intellectual companion."

Mary Robinson - A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination with Anecdotes

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

John Milton - On Shakespeare, in Second Folio

But, if the sense of touch, whereby mankind Beyond all other, think the same voutsafed To cattle and each beast; which would not be To them made common and divulged, if aught Therein enjoyed were worthy to subdue The soul of Man, or passion in him move. What higher in her society thou find'st Attractive, human, rational, love still; In loving thou dost well; in passion not, Wherein true Love consists not. Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges—hath his seat In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale By which to Heavenly Love thou may'st ascend, Not sunk in carnal pleasure; for which cause Among the beasts no mate for thee was found."

John Milton - Paradise Lost

On whom the Angel "Hail!" Bestowed—the holy salutation used Long after to blest Mary, second Eve:— "Hail! Mother of mankind, whose fruitful womb Shall fill the world more numerous with thy sons Than with these various fruits the trees of God Have heaped this table!"

John Milton - Paradise Lost

What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

John Milton - Paradise Lost

Some have no money That thither comey For their ale to pay; That is a shrewd array! Elinour sweared, "Nay, Ye shall not bear away My ale for naught, By Him that me bought." With, "Hey, dog, hey, Have these hogs away!"

John Skelton - The Tunning of Eleanor Rumming

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town , or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes...

Jonathan Swift - A Modest Proposal

"And the French for these last Fifty Years hath been polishing as much as it will bear, and appears to be declining by the natural Inconstancy of that People, and the Affection of some late Authors to introduce and multiply Cant Words, which is the most ruinous Corruption in any Language. [...] But the English Tongue is not arrived to such a Degree of Perfection, as to make us apprehend any Thoughts of its Decay; and if it were once refined to a certain Standard, perhaps there might be Ways found out to fix it for ever; [...]"

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

"But where I say, that I would have our Language, after it is duly correct, always to last; I do not mean that is should never by enlarged: Provided, that no Word which a Society shall give a Sanction to, be afterwards antiquated [...], that they may have liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find occasion for: Because then the old Books will yet be always valuable, according to their intrinsick Worth, and not thrown aside on account of unintelligible Words and Phrases, which appear harsh and uncouth, only because they are out of Fashion."

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

"Several young Men at the Universities [...] run into a worse Extream, and think all Politeness to consist in reading the daily Trash sent down to them from hence: This they call knowing the World, and reading Men and Manners. Thus furnished they come up to Town, reckon all their Errors for Accomplishments, borrow the newest Sett of Phrases, and if they take a Pen into their Hands, all the odd Words they have picked up in a Coffee-House, [...], are produced as Flowers of Style; and the Orthography refined to the utmost."

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

"So that if the Choice had been left to me, I would rather have trusted the Refinement of our Language, as far as it relates to Sound, to the Judgment of the Women, than of illiterate Court-Fops, half-witted Poets, and University-Boys. For, it is plain that Women in their manner of corrupting Words, do naturally discard the Consonants, as we do the Vowels."

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

"The Period wherein the English Tongue received most Improvement, I take to commence with the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, and to conclude with the Great Rebellion in Forty Two. 'Tis true, there was a very ill Taste both of Style and Wit, which prevailed under King James the First, but that seems to have been corrected in the first Years of his Successor, who among many other qualifications of an excellent Prince, was a great Patron of Learning. From the Civil War to this present Time, I am apt to doubt whether the Corruptions in our Language have not at least equalled the Refinements of it; [...] During the Usurpation, such an Infusion of Enthusiastick Jargon prevailed in every Writing, as was not shook off in many Years after. To this succeeded that Licentiousness which entered with the Restoration, and from infecting our Religion and Morals, fell to corrupt our Language;"

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

"Supposing women were to act upon the same principle of egotism, consulting their own inclinations, interest, and amusement only, (and there is no law of Nature which forbids them; none of any species but that which is framed by man;) what would be the consequences? The annihilation of all moral and religious order. So that every good which cements the bonds of civilized society, originates wholly in the forbearance, and conscientiousness of woman." (1799)

Mary Robinson - A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination with Anecdotes

"The Persons who are to undertake this Work [...] will observe many gross Improprieties, which however authorised by Practice, and grown familiar, ought to be discarded. They will find many Words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of our Language, many more to be corrected; and perhaps not a few, long since antiquated, which ought to be restored, on account of their Energy and Sound. [...] For I am of Opinion, that it is better a Language should not be wholly perfect, than it should be perpetually changing; [...] It is Your Lordship's Observation, that if it were not for the Bible and Common Prayer Book in the vulgar Tongue, we should hardly be able to understand any Thing that was written among us an hundred Years ago: [...] For those Books being perpetually read in Churches, have proved a kind of Standard for Language, especially to the common People. "

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

"[...] so that most of the Books we see now a-days, are full of those Manglings and Abbreviations. Instances of this Abuse are innumerable: What does Your Lordship think of the Words, Drudg'd, Disturb'd, Rebuk't, Fledg'd, and a thousand others, every where to be met in Prose as well as Verse? Where, by leaving out a Vowel to save a Syllable, we form so jarring a Sound, and so difficult to utter, that I have often wondred how it could ever obtain."

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

And therefore, My Lord, the Design of this Paper is not so much to offer You Ways and Means, as to complain of a Grievance, the redressing of which is to be Your own Work, as much as that of paying the Nation's Debts, or opening a Trade into the South Sea; and though not of such immediate Benefit as either of these, or any other of Your glorious Actions, yet perhaps, in future Ages, not less to Your Honour.

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

Latin "from the Days of Romulus to those of Julius Cæsar, suffered perpetual Changes, [...] it is manifest, that the Latin, Three hundred Years before Tully, [Cicero, 106 BC - 43 BC] was as unintelligible in his Time, as the English and French of the same Period are now. [...] There were many Reasons for the Corruptions of the last [Latin]:As, the Change of their Government into a Tyranny, which ruined the Study of Eloquence, there being no further Use of Encouragement for popular Orators: Their giving not only the Freedom of the City, but Capacity for Employments, to several Towns in Gaul, Spain, and Germany, and other distant Parts, as far as Asia; which brought a great Number of forein Pretenders into Rome : [...] The great Corruption of Manners, and Introduction of forein Luxury, with forein Terms to express it; with several others that might be assigned: Not to mention those Invasions from the Goths and Vandals, which are too obvious to insist on."

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

Now, tho' I am fully convinced, that You fear God, honour Your QUEEN, and love Your Country, [...]; yet I must believe that the Desire of Fame hath been no inconsiderable Motive to quicken You in the Pursuit of those Actions which will best deserve it. But at the same time, I must be so plain as to tell Your Lordship, that if You will not take some Care to settle our Language, and put it into a state of Continuance, I cannot promise that Your Memory shall be preserved above an hundred Years, further than by imperfect Tradition. [...] This is like employing an excellent Statuary to work upon mouldering Stone.

Jonathan Swift -A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savge place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Kubla Khan, Or, a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man. Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopped and played, Their thoughts I cannot measure:— But the least motion which they made It seemed a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there. If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan, Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?

Lines Written in Early Spring - William Wordsworth

"I agree that, according to the long established rule of custom, domestic occupations, such as household management, the education of children, the exercise of rational affection, should devolve on woman. But let the partner of her cares consider her zeal as the effect of reason, temporizing sensibility, and prompting the exertions of mutual interest; not as the constrained obsequiousness of inferior organization. Let man confess that a wife, (I do not mean an idiot), is a thinking and a discriminating helpmate; not a bondswoman, whom custom subjects to his power, and subdues to his convenience. A wife is bound, by the laws of nature and religion, to participate in all the various vicissitudes of fortune, which her husband may, through life, be compelled to experience."

Mary Robinson - A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination with Anecdotes

Who has not waked to list the busy sounds Of summer's morning, in the sultry smoke Of noisy London? On the pavement hot The sooty chimney-boy, with dingy face And tattered covering, shrilly bawls his trade, Rousing the sleepy housemaid. At the door The milk-pail rattles, and the tinkling bell Proclaims the dustman's office; while the street Is lost in clouds impervious. Now begins The din of hackney-coaches, waggons, carts; While tinmen's shops, and noisy trunk-makers, Knife-grinders, coopers, squeaking cork-cutters, Fruit-barrows, and the hunger-giving cries Of vegetable-vendors, fill the air. Now every shop displays its varied trade, And the fresh-sprinkled pavement cools the feet Of early walkers. At the private door The ruddy housemaid twirls the busy mop, Annoying the smart 'prentice, or neat girl, Tripping with band-box lightly. Now the sun Darts burning splendor on the glittering pane, Save where the canvas awning throws a shade On the gay merchandise. Now, spruce and trim, In shops (where beauty smiles with industry) Sits the smart damsel; while the passenger Peeps through the window, watching every charm. Now pastry dainties catch the eye minute Of humming insects, while the limy snare Waits to enthrall them. Now the lamp-lighter Mounts the tall ladder, nimbly venturous, To trim the half-filled lamps, while at his feet The pot-boy yells discordant! All along The sultry pavement, the old-clothes-man cries In tone monotonous, while sidelong views The area for his traffic: now the bag Is slyly opened, and the half-worn suit (Sometimes the pilfered treasure of the base Domestic spoiler), for one half its worth, Sinks in the green abyss. The porter now Bears his huge load along the burning way; And the poor poet wakes from busy dreams, To paint the summer morning.

Mary Robinson - London's Summer Morning

"My first real knowledge of myself was as an unprotected orphan among the valleys and fells of Cumberland. I was in the service of a farmer; and with crook in hand, my dog at my side, I shepherded a numerous flock on the near uplands. I cannot say much in praise of such a life; and its pains far exceeded its pleasures. There was freedom in it, a companionship with nature, and a reckless loneliness; but these, romantic as they were, did not accord with the love of action and desire of human sympathy, characteristic of youth. Neither the care of my flock, nor the change of seasons, were sufficient to tame my eager spirit; my out-door life and unemployed time were the temptations that led me early into lawless habits."

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - The Last Man

"I protest unto you, it may rather be called a friendly kind of fight than a play or recreation, a bloody and murdering practise, than a fellowly sport or pastime. For, doth not every one he in wait for his adversary, seeking to overthrow him, and to prick him on his nose, though it be upon hard stones, in ditch or dale, in valley or hill, or what place soever it be, he careth not, so he may have him down?"

Phillip Stubbes - An Anatomy of Abuses

- "The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, [...] the primary laws of our nature [...]"

Preface to the 2nd and 3rd editions of Lyrical Ballads = Romantic Manifesto - S. T. Coleridge, W. Wordsworth

When they did greet me Father, sudden Awe Weigh'd down my spirit! I retired and knelt Seeking the throne of grace, but inly felt No heavenly visitation upwards draw My feeble mind, nor cheering ray impart. Ah me! before the Eternal Sire I brought The unquiet silence of confused Thought And shapeless feelings: my o'erwhelmed Heart Trembled: and vacant tears stream'd down my face. And now once more, O Lord! to thee I bend, Lover of souls! and groan for future grace, That, ere my Babe youth's perilous maze have trod, Thy overshadowing Spirit may descend And he be born again, a child of God!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Sonnet: On Receiving a Letter Informing Me of the Birth of a Son (1796)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

Shakespeare - Sonnet 130 - My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

Those lips that Love's own hand did make Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate,'To me that languish'd for her sake:But when she saw my woeful state,Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that ever sweet Was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus anew to greet: 'I hate' she alter'd with an end, That follow'd it as gentle day Doth follow night, who like a fiend From heaven to hell is flown away; 'I hate' from hate away she threw, And saved my life, saying -- 'not you.‚

Shakespeare - Sonnet 145 dedicated to his wife

In the sweet shire of Cardigan, Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall, An old Man dwells, a little man,— 'Tis said he once was tall. For five-and-thirty years he lived A running huntsman merry; And still the centre of his cheek Is red as a ripe cherry. No man like him the horn could sound, And hill and valley rang with glee When Echo bandied, round and round The halloo of Simon Lee. In those proud days, he little cared For husbandry or tillage; To blither tasks did Simon rouse The sleepers of the village. [...] "You're overtasked, good Simon Lee, Give me your tool," to him I said; And at the word right gladly he Received my proffered aid. I struck, and with a single blow The tangled root I severed, At which the poor old Man so long And vainly had endeavoured. The tears into his eyes were brought, And thanks and praises seemed to run So fast out of his heart, I thought They never would have done. —I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning.

Simon Lee, The Old Huntsman, in Lyrical Ballads 1798 - William Wordsworth

To sit and curb the soul's mute rage Which preys upon itself alone; To curse the life which is the cage Of fettered grief that dares not groan, Hiding from many a careless eye The scorned load of agony. Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, The ... thou alone should be, To spend years thus, and be rewarded, As thou, sweet love, requited me When none were near—Oh! I did wake From torture for that moment's sake. Upon my heart thy accents sweet Of peace and pity fell like dew On flowers half dead;—thy lips did meet Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw Their soft persuasion on my brain, Charming away its dream of pain. [...] Gentle and good and mild thou art, Nor can I live if thou appear Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart Away from me, or stoop to wear The mask of scorn, although it be To hide the love thou feel'st for me.

TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN - Percy Bysshe Shelley

A little black thing among the snow,Crying "'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--"They are both gone up to the church to pray.Because I was happy upon the heath,And smiled among the winter's snow,They clothed me in the clothes of death,And taught me to sing the notes of woe. And because I am happy and dance and sing,They think they have done me no injury,And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,Who make up a heaven of our misery."

The Chimney Sweeper, Songs of Experience version - William Blake

And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins & set them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father & never want joy. And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark And got with our bags & our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

The Chimney Sweeper, Songs of Innocence version - William Blake

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

The Chimney Sweeper, Songs of Innocence version - William Blake

Article I - Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good. Article II - The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression. Article III - The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation. Article IV - Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law. Article V - The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order. Article VI - The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents. Article VII - No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the law must obey at once; he renders himself culpable by resistance. Article VIII - The law should establish only penalties that are strictly and evidently necessary, and no one can be punished but under a law established and promulgated before the offense and legally applied. Article IX - Any man being presumed innocent until he is declared culpable if it is judged indispensable to arrest him, any rigor which would not be necessary for the securing of his person must be severely reprimanded by the law. ■ Article X - No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law. ■ Article XI - The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law. ■ Article XII - The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen necessitates a public force: this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all and not for the particular utility of those in whom it is trusted. Article XIII - For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenditures of administration, a common contribution is indispensable; it must be equally distributed to all the citizens, according to their ability to pay. ■ Article XIV - Each citizen has the right to ascertain, by himself or through his representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to know the uses to which it is put, and of determining the proportion, basis, collection, and duration. ■ Article XV - The society has the right of requesting an account from any public agent of its administration. ■ Article XVI - Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no Constitution. ■ Article XVII - Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.

The Declaration of the Right of Mand and of the Citizen

In distant countries I have been,And yet I have not often seenA healthy man, a man full grownWeep in the public roads alone.But such a one, on English ground,And in the broad high-way, I met;Along the broad high-way he came,His cheeks with tears were wet.Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad;And in his arms a lamb he had. He saw me, and he turned aside,As if he wished himself to hide:Then with his coat he made essayTo wipe those briny tears away.I follow'd him, and said, "My friend "What ails you? wherefore weep you so?"— "Shame on me, Sir! this lusty lamb,He makes my tears to flow.To-day I fetched him from the rock;He is the last of all my flock. When I was young, a single man,And after youthful follies ran,Though little given to care and thought,Yet, so it was, a ewe I bought;And other sheep from her I raised, As healthy sheep as you might see,And then I married, and was richAs I could wish to be;Of sheep I number'd a full score,And every year encreas'd my store. [...] They dwindled, Sir, sad sight to see!From ten to five, from five to three,A lamb, a weather, and a ewe;And then at last, from three to two;And of my fifty, yesterday I had but only one,And here it lies upon my arm,Alas! and I have none;To-day I fetched it from the rockIt is the last of all my flock."

The Last of the Flock, in Lyrical Ballads 1798 - William Wordsworth

'"And if any one ask my Study to see, I charge you to trust them not with the key; Whoever may beg, and entreat, and implore, On your life let nobody enter that door." There lived a young man in the house, who in vain Access to that Study had sought to obtain; And he begg'd and pray'd the books to see, Till the foolish woman gave him the key.' ... "What wouldst thou with me?" the third time he cries, And a flash of lightning came from his eyes, And he lifted his griffin claw in the air, And the young man had not strength for a prayer. His eyes red fire and fury dart As out he tore the young man's heart ;He grinn'd a horrible grin at his prey; And in a clap of thunder vanish'd away.

The Mortal Immortal - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason; reason is founded on the evidence of our senses. [...] If the Deity should appear to us, if he should convince our senses of his existence, this revelation would necessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared have the strongest possible conviction of his existence. But the God of Theologians is incapable of local visibility."

The Necessity of Atheism - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"It is urged that man knows that whatever is must either have had a beginning, or have existed from all eternity, he also knows that whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created: until that is clearly demonstrated, we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. We must prove design before we can infer a designer."

The Necessity of Atheism - Percy Bysshe Shelley

This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken. A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support any proposition is the only secure way of attaining truth, on the advantages of which it is unnecessary to descant: our knowledge of the existence, of a Deity is a subject of such importance that it cannot be too minutely investigated; in consequence of this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is necessary first to consider the nature of belief. When a proposition is offered to the mind, It perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this perception from being immediate; these the mind attempts to remove in order that the perception may be distinct. The mind is active in the investigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each, which is passive; the investigation being confused with the perception has induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief. -- that belief is an act of volition, -- in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which, in its nature, it is incapable: it is equally incapable of merit. Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement. The degrees of excitement are three. The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind; consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent. The decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience, derived from these sources, claims the next degree. The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree. (A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a just barometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them.) Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason; reason is founded on the evidence of our senses. Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions: it is to be considered what arguments we receive from each of them, which should convince us of the existence of a Deity. 1st, The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear to us, if he should convince our senses of his existence, this revelation would necessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared have the strongest possible conviction of his existence. But the God of Theologians is incapable of local visibility. 2d, Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is must either have had a beginning, or have existed from all eternity, he also knows that whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created: until that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. We must prove design before we can infer a designer. The only idea which we can form of causation is derivable from the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one from the other. In a base where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind believes that which is least incomprehensible; -- it is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increase the intolerability of the burthen? The other argument, which is founded on a Man's knowledge of his own existence, stands thus. A man knows not only that he now is, but that once he was not; consequently there must have been a cause. But our idea of causation is alone derivable from the constant conjunction of objects and the consequent Inference of one from the other; and, reasoning experimentally, we can only infer from effects caused adequate to those effects. But there certainly is a generative power which is effected by certain instruments: we cannot prove that it is inherent in these instruments" nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of demonstration: we admit that the generative power is incomprehensible; but to suppose that the same effect is produced by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it more incomprehensible. 3d, Testimony. It is required that testimony should not be contrary to reason. The testimony that the Deity convinces the senses of men of his existence can only be admitted by us, if our mind considers it less probable, that these men should have been deceived than that the Deity should have appeared to them. Our reason can never admit the testimony of men, who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles, but that the Deity was irrational; for he commanded that he should be believed, he proposed the highest rewards for, faith, eternal punishments for disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an act of volition; the mind is ever passive, or involuntarily active; from this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone, then, who have been convinced by the evidence of the senses can believe it. Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three sources of conviction, the mind cannot believe the existence of a creative God: it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through which their mind views any subject of discussion. Every reflecting mind must acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity. God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton says: Hypotheses non fingo, quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur hypothesis, vocanda est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel physicae, vel qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia locum non habent.[1] To all proofs of the existence of a creative God apply this valuable rule. We see a variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers: we merely know their effects; we are in a estate of ignorance with respect to their essences and causes. These Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the pride of philosophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes. From the phenomena, which are the objects of our attempt to infer a cause, which we call God, and gratuitously endow it with all negative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent this general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences. The being called God by no means answers with the conditions prescribed by Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the occult qualities of the peripatetics to the effuvium of Boyle and the crinities or nebulae of Herschel. God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even his worshippers allow that it is impossible to form any idea of him: they exclaim with the French poet, Pour dire ce qu'il est, il faut etre lui-meme.[2] Lord Bacon says that atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men: hence atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more clear- sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the boundaries of the present life. -- Bacon's Moral Essays. The [Beginning here, and to the paragraph ending with Systeme de la Nature," Shelley wrote in French. A free translation has been substituted.] first theology of man made him first fear and adore the elements themselves, the gross and material objects of nature; he next paid homage to the agents controlling the elements, lower genies, heroes or men gifted with great qualities. By force of reflection he sought to simplify things by submitting all nature to a single agent, spirit, or universal soul, which, gave movement to nature and all its branches. Mounting from cause to cause, mortal man has ended by seeing nothing; and it is in this obscurity that he has placed his God; it is in this darksome abyss that his uneasy imagination has always labored to fabricate chimeras, which will continue to afflict him until his knowledge of nature chases these phantoms which he has always so adored. If we wish to explain our ideas of the Divinity we shall be obliged to admit that, by the word God, man has never been able to designate but the most hidden, the most distant and the most unknown cause of the effects which he saw; he has made use of his word only when the play of natural and known causes ceased to be visible to him; as soon as he lost the thread of these causes, or when his mind could no longer follow the chain, he cut the difficulty and ended his researches by calling God the last of the causes, that is to say, that which is beyond all causes that he knew; thus he but assigned a vague denomination to an unknown cause, at which his laziness or the limits of his knowledge forced him to stop. Every time we say that God is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was able to operate by the aid of forces or causes that we know in nature. It is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity. If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction. In proportion as man taught himself, his strength and his resources augmented with his knowledge; science, the arts, industry, furnished him assistance; experience reassured him or procured for him means of resistance to the efforts of many causes which ceased to alarm as soon as they became understood. In a word, his terrors dissipated in the same proportion as his mind became enlightened. The educated man ceases to be superstitious. It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees? That is because, in primitive times, their legislators and their guides made it their duty. "Adore and believe," they said, "the gods whom you cannot understand; have confidence in our profound wisdom; we know more than you about Divinity." But why should I come to you? It is because God willed it thus; it is because God will punish you if you dare resist. But this God, is not he, then, the thing in question? However, man has always traveled in this vicious circle; his slothful mind has always made him find it easier to accept the judgment of others. All religious nations are founded solely on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination and do not want one to reason; authority wants one to believe in God; this God is himself founded only on the authority of a few men who pretend to know him, and to come in his name and announce him on earth. A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man. Should it not, then, be for the priests, the inspired, the metaphysicians that should be reserved the conviction of the existence of a God, which they, nevertheless, say is so necessary for all mankind? But Can you find any harmony in the theological opinions of the different inspired ones or thinkers scattered over the earth? They themselves, who make a profession of adoring the same God, are they in Agreement? Are they content with the proofs that their colleagues bring of his existence? Do they subscribe unanimously to the ideas they present on nature, on his conduct, on the manner of understanding his pretended oracles? Is there a country on earth where the science of God is really perfect? Has this science anywhere taken the consistency and uniformity that we the see the science of man assume, even in the most futile crafts, the most despised trades. These words mind immateriality, creation, predestination and grace; this mass of subtle distinctions with which theology to everywhere filled; these so ingenious inventions, imagined by thinkers who have succeeded one another for so many centuries, have only, alas! confused things all the more, and never has man's most necessary science, up to this time acquired the slightest fixity. For thousands of years the lazy dreamers have perpetually relieved one another to meditate on the Divinity, to divine his secret will, to invent the proper hypothesis to develop this important enigma. Their slight success has not discouraged the theological vanity: one always speaks of God: one has his throat cut for God: and this sublime being still remains the most unknown and the most discussed. Man would have been too happy, if, limiting himself to the visible objects which interested him, he had employed, to perfect his real sciences, his laws, his morals, his education, one-half the efforts he has put into his researches on the Divinity. He would have been still wiser and still more fortunate if he had been satisfied to let his jobless guides quarrel among themselves, sounding depths capable of rendering them dizzy, without himself mixing in their senseless disputes. But it is the essence of ignorance to attach importance to that which it does not understand. Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interests of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced by the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies. If, leaving for a moment the annoying idea that theology gives of a capricious God, whose partial and despotic decrees decide the fate of mankind, we wish to fix our eyes only on the pretended goodness, which all men, even trembling before this God, agree is ascribing to him, if we allow him the purpose that is lent him of having worked only for his own glory, of exacting the homage of intelligent beings; of seeking only in his works the well-being of mankind; how reconcile these views and these dispositions with the ignorance truly invincible in which this God, so glorious and so good, leaves the majority of mankind in regard to God himself? If God wishes to be known, cherished, thanked, why does he not show himself under his favorable features to all these intelligent beings by whom he wishes to be loved and adored? Why not manifest himself to the whole earth in an unequivocal manner, much more capable of convincing us than these private revelations which seem to accuse the Divinity of an annoying partiality for some of his creatures? The all-powerful, should he not heave more convincing means by which to show man than these ridiculous metamorphoses, these pretended incarnations, which are attested by writers so little in agreement among themselves? In place of so many miracles, invented to prove the divine mission of so many legislators revered by the different people of the world, the Sovereign of these spirits, could he not convince the human mind in an instant of the things he wished to make known to it? Instead of hanging the sun in the vault of the firmament, instead of scattering stars without order, and the constellations which fill space, would it not have been more in conformity with the views of a God so jealous of his glory and so well-intentioned for mankind, to write, in a manner not subject to dispute, his name, his attributes, his permanent wishes in ineffaceable characters, equally understandable to all the inhabitants of the earth? No one would then be able to doubt the existence of God, of his clear will, of his visible intentions. Under the eyes of this so terrible God no one would have the audacity to violate his commands, no mortal would dare risk attracting his anger: finally, no man would have the effrontery to impose on his name or to interpret his will according to his own fancy. In fact, even while admitting the existence of the theological God, and the reality of his so discordant attributes which they impute to him, one can conclude nothing to authorize the conduct or the cult which one is prescribed to render him. Theology is truly the sieve of the Danaides. By dint of contradictory qualities and hazarded assertions it has, that is to say, so handicapped its God that it has made it impossible for him to act. If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest. -- Systame de la Nature. London, 1781. The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus Publicly professes himself an atheist, -- Quapropter effigiem Del formamque quaerere imbecillitatis humanae reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in parte, totus est gensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus animae, totus animi, totus sul. ... Imperfectae vero in homine naturae praecipua solatia, ne deum quidem omnia. Namque nec sibi protest mortem consciscere, si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis; nee mortales aeternitate donare, aut revocare defunctos; nec facere ut qui vixit non vixerit, qui honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque habere In praeteritum ius praeterquam oblivionts, atque (ut. facetis quoque argumentis societas haec cum, deo compuletur) ut bis dena viginti non sint, et multa similiter efficere non posse. -- Per quaedeclaratur haud dubie naturae potentiam id quoque ease quod Deum vocamus. -- Plin. Nat. Hist. cap. de Deo. The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W. Drummond's Academical Questions, chap. iii. -- Sir W. seems to consider the atheism to which it leads as a sufficient presumption of the falsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is more consistent with the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than an hypothesis incapable of proof, although it might militate, with the obstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher. Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta aunt: imo quia naturae potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte ad eandem Dei potentism recurritur, quando rei alicuius causam naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramusd -- Spinoza, Tract. Theologico-Pol. chap 1. P. 14. On Life Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which support them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems, to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object. If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the spectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he imagined the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas, and the rivers; the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of the forms and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colors which attend the setting and the rising sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these things not before existing, truly we should have been astonished, and it would not have been a vain boast to have said of such a man, "Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta." But how these things are looked on with little wonder, and to be conscious of them with intense delight is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a refined and extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not for them. It is thus with Life -- that which includes all. What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without, our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves; and this is much. For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What is birth and death? The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusion of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived. It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid universe of external things is "such stuff as dreams are made of." The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted me to materialism. This materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of things as it afforded; man is a being of high aspirations, "looking both before and after," whose "thoughts wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance with transience and decay: incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and the past; being, not what he is, but what he has been and all be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. Each is at once the center and the circumference; the point to which all things are referred, and the line in which all things are contained. Such contemplations as these, materialism and the popular philosophy of mind and matter alike they are only consistent with the intellectual system. It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer on abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir William Drummond's Academical Questions. After such an exposition, it would be idle to translate into other words what could only lose its energy and fitness by the change. Examined point by point, and word by word, the most discriminating intellects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does not conduct inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated. What follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth, it gives us no additional insight into our hidden nature, neither its action nor itself: Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build, has much work yet remaining as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages. it makes one step towards this object; it destroys error, and the roots of error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. it reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have acted, but for the misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its own creation. By signs, I would be understood in a wide sense, including what is properly meant by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter sense, almost all familiar objects are signs, standing, not for themselves, but for others, in their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead to a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error. Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and intense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many of the Circumstances of social life were then important to us which are now no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on which I mean to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt, from ourselves. They seemed, as it were, to constitute one mass. There are some persons who, in this respect, are always children. Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no distinction. And these are states which precede, or accompany, or follow an unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings and then reasoning are the combined result of a multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions, planted by reiteration. The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the intellectual philosophy, to that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two classes of thought which are distinguished by the names of ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion. The words, I, you, they, are not signs of any actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different modifications of the one mind. Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The words I, and you, and they are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has conducted us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and what wonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little we know! The relations of things remain unchanged, by whatever system. By the word things is to be understood any object of thought, that is, any thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an apprehension of distinction. The relations of these remain unchanged; and such is the material of our knowledge. What is the cause of life? That is, how was it produced, or what agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon life? All recorded generations of mankind have wearily busied themselves in inventing answers to this question; and the result has been -- Religion. Yet that the basis of all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties -- and beyond that experience how vain is argument! -- cannot create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a word expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard to the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to each other. If anyone desires to know how unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develop themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind. On A Future State It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death -- that apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that species of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely, the resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which they have distinguished from the objects of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philosophers -- and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science -- suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms. Let us trace the reasoning which in one and the other have conducted to these two opinions, and endeavor to discover what we ought to think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyze the ideas and feelings which constitute the contending beliefs, and watchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert, with certainty,, that we do or do not live after death. The examination of this subject requires that it should be stripped of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favor of a future state. It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be numbered among the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that he will make every sensitive being, who does not deserve punishment, happy forever. But this view of the subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, to neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward. By the word death, we express that condition in which natures resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they are. We no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine texture of material frame, without which we have no experience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path -- these he cannot meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed, and the intellectual operations dependent on them have perished with their sources. How can a corpse see or feel? its eyes are eaten out, and its heart is black and without motion. What intercourse can two heaps of putrid Clay and crumbling bones hold together? When you can discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself. The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common to all men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees with more certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of sentiment and thought. He observes the mental powers increase and fade with those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiocy may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other. Thus color, and sound, and taste, and odor exist only relatively. But let thought be considered only as some peculiar substance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of living beings. Why should that substance be assumed to be something essentially distinct from all others, and exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is exempt? It differs, indeed, from all other substances, as electricity, and light, and magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth, severally differ from all others. Each of these is subject to change and decay, and to conversion into other forms. Yet the difference between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists between life, or thought, and fire. The difference between the two former was never alleged as an argument for eternal permanence of either, in that form under which they first might offer themselves to our notice. Why should the difference between the two latter substances be an argument for the prolongation of the existence of one and not the other, when the existence of both has arrived at their apparent termination? To say that fire exists without manifesting any of the properties of fire, such as light, heat, etc., or that the Principle of life exists without consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive, is to resign, by an awkward distortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. To say that the principle of life may exist in distribution among various forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either true or false, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of existence after death, in any sense in which that event can belong to the hopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual and vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner from all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance between themselves which it in no degree participates. In what manner can this concession be made an argument for its imperishabillity? All that we see or know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything else. But that it survives that period, beyond which we have no experience of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or imagine. Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each animal and plant, a power which converts the substances homogeneous with itself. That is, the relations between certain elementary particles of matter undergo a change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use words: principle, power, cause, etc., we mean to express no real being, but only to class under those terms a certain series of coexisting phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain substance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist. It certainly may be; thought it is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs on which sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed before birth; If, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together; If there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposing that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is concerned, the same will take place with regard to us, individually considered, after death, as had taken place before our birth. It is said that it is possible that we should continue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation the burden of proving the negative of a question, the affirmative of which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its very nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding. It is sufficiently easy. indeed, to form any proposition, concerning which we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated. But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be persuaded. This desire to be forever as we are; the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a future state. [1] And I frame no hypotheses, for whatever is of the hypothesis of the phenomena that does not give way, to be called the, and the hypothesis, or of metaphysics, or physical person, or of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in philosophy. [2] GT: To say what he is, one has to be himself.

The Necessity of Atheism - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings?— Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again? Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;— I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

The Solitary Reaper - William Wordsworth

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double: Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble? The sun above the mountain's head, A freshening lustre mellow Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow. Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it. And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless— Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives.

The Tables Turned - William Wordsworth

It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentlenessInto a strange fashion of forsaking;And I have leave to go of her goodness,And she also, to use newfangleness.But since that I so kindly am servedI would fain know what she hath deserved.

Thomas Wyatt the Elder - They Flee From Me

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Thomas Wyatt the Elder - Whoso List to Hunt

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar: Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude: In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,— Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

To Wordsworth - Percy Bysshe Shelley

A simple Child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage Girl: She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. [...] "Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?" "How many? Seven in all," she said, And wondering looked at me. [...] "And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side." "How many are you, then," said I, "If they two are in heaven?" Quick was the little Maid's reply, "O Master! we are seven." "But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!" 'Twas throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

We Are Seven, in Lyrical Ballads 1798 - William Wordsworth

- - I wander thro' each charter'd street, - Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. - And mark in every face I meet - Marks of weakness, marks of woe. - In every cry of every Man, - In every Infants cry of fear, - In every voice: in every ban, - The mind-forg'd manacles I hear: - How the Chimney-sweepers cry - Every blackning Church appalls, - And the hapless Soldiers sigh - Runs in blood down Palace walls - But most thro' midnight streets I hear - How the youthful Harlots curse - Blasts the new-born Infant's tear - And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

William Blake - London

"The Devil answer'd: [...] 'If Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree. Now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbath's God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? [...] I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.' When he had so spoken, I beheld the Angel, who stretched out his arms embracing the flame of fire, & he was consumed and arose as Elijah. Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend; we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall have if they behave well. I have also The Bible of Hell, which the world shall have whether they will or no." (p. 120)

William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Why art thou silent & invisible Father of jealousy Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds From every searching Eye Why darkness & obscurity In all thy words & laws That none dare eat the fruit but from The wily serpents jaws Or is it because secrecy gains females loud applause.

William Blake - To Nobodaddy

"Why, William, on that old gray stone,"Thus for the length of half a day,"Why, William, sit you thus alone,"And dream your time away? "Where are your books?—that light bequeathed"To beings else forlorn and blind!"Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed"From dead men to their kind. "You look round on your Mother Earth,"As if she for no purpose bore you;"As if you were her first-born birth,"And none had lived before you!" One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,When life was sweet, I knew not why,To me my good friend Matthew spake,And thus I made reply: "The eye—it cannot choose but see;"We cannot bid the ear be still;"Our bodies feel, where'er they be,"Against, or with our will. "Nor less I deem that there are Powers"Which of themselves our minds impress;"That we can feed this mind of ours"In a wise passiveness, "Think you, mid all this mighty sum"Of things for ever speaking,"That nothing of itself will come,"But we must still be seeking? "—Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,"Conversing as I may,"I sit upon this old gray stone,"And dream my time away."

William Wordsworth - Expostulation and Reply

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company: I gazed - and gazed - but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth - I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times, In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in romance! When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, When most intent on making of herself A prime Enchantress—to assist the work Which then was going forward in her name! Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth, The beauty wore of promise, that which sets (As at some moment might not be unfelt Among the bowers of paradise itself ) The budding rose above the rose full blown. What temper at the prospect did not wake To happiness unthought of? The inert Were roused, and lively natures rapt away! They who had fed their childhood upon dreams, The playfellows of fancy, who had made All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred Among the grandest objects of the sense, And dealt with whatsoever they found there As if they had within some lurking right To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood, Had watched all gentle motions, and to these Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild, And in the region of their peaceful selves;— Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire, And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish; Were called upon to exercise their skill, Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,—the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all!

William Wordsworth - The French Revolution as it Appeared to Enthusiasts and its Commencement

[...the oppressed...] become Oppressors in their turn, Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence For one of Conquest, losing sight of all Which they had struggled for... (11. 206 - 209)

William Wordsworth - The Prelude

Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will.

William Wordsworth - The Prelude, 1850 version

It is the first mild day of March: Each minute sweeter than before The redbreast sings from the tall larch That stands beside our door. There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare ,And grass in the green field. My sister! ('tis a wish of mine) Now that our morning meal is done, Make haste, your morning task resign; Come forth and feel the sun. Edward will come with you;--and, pray, Put on with speed your woodland dress; And bring no book: for this one day We'll give to idleness. No joyless forms shall regulate Our living calendar: We from to-day, my Friend, will date The opening of the year. Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth:-- It is the hour of feeling. One moment now may give us more Than years of toiling reason: Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season. Some silent laws our hearts will make, Which they shall long obey: We for the year to come may take Our temper from to-day. And from the blessed power that rolls About, below, above, We'll frame the measure of our souls: They shall be tuned to love. Then come, my Sister! come, I pray, With speed put on your woodland dress; And bring no book: for this one day We'll give to idleness.

William Wordsworth - To My Sister

To seek the sacred river Alph To walk the caves of ice To break my fast on honey dew And drink the milk of paradise I had heard the whispered tales Of immortality The deepest mystery From an ancient book, I took a clue I scaled the frozen mountain tops Of eastern lands unknown Time and man alone Searching for the lost, Xanadu Xanadu To stand within the pleasure dome Decreed by Kubla Khan To taste anew the fruits of life The last immortal man To find the sacred river Alph To walk the caves of ice Oh, I will dine on honey dew And drink the milk of paradise, A thousand years have come and gone But time has passed me by Stars stopped in the sky Frozen in an everlasting view Waiting for the world to end Weary of the night Praying for the light Prison of the lost, Xanadu Xanadu Held within the pleasure dome Decreed by Kubla Khan To taste my bitter triumph As a mad immortal man Never more shall I return Escape these caves of ice For I have dined on honey dew And drunk the milk of paradise, whoa, paradise.

Xanadu (A Farewell to kings) - Rush = Rock adaptation of Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream, A fragment - Samuel Taylor Coleridge